Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
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GREAT EXPECTATIONSGREAT EXPECTATIONS
by
Charles Dickens
Chapter 1
My father's family name being Pirrip, and my Christian name Philip, my
infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than Pip.
So, I called myself Pip, and came to be called Pip.
I give Pirrip as my father's family name, on the authority of his tombstone
and my sister - Mrs. Joe Gargery, who married the blacksmith. As I never saw my
father or my mother, and never saw any likeness of either of them (for their
days were long before the days of photographs), my first fancies regarding what
they were like, were unreasonably derived from their tombstones. The shape of
the letters on my father's, gave me an odd idea that he was a square, stout,
dark man, with curly black hair. From the character and turn of the
inscription, "Also Georgiana Wife of the Above," I drew a childish conclusion
that my mother was freckled and sickly. To five little stone lozenges, each
about a foot and a half long, which were arranged in a neat row beside their
grave, and were sacred to the memory of five little brothers of mine - who gave
up trying to get a living, exceedingly early in that universal struggle - I am
indebted for a belief I religiously entertained that they had all been born on
their backs with their hands in their trousers-pockets, and had never taken them
out in this state of existence.
Ours was the marsh country, down by the river, within, as the river wound,
twenty miles of the sea. My first most vivid and broad impression of the
identity of things, seems to me to have been gained on a memorable raw afternoon
towards evening. At such a time I found out for certain, that this bleak place
overgrown with nettles was the churchyard; and that Philip Pirrip, late of this
parish, and also Georgiana wife of the above, were dead and buried; and that
Alexander, Bartholomew, Abraham, Tobias, and Roger, infant children of the
aforesaid, were also dead and buried; and that the dark flat wilderness beyond
the churchyard, intersected with dykes and mounds and gates, with scattered
cattle feeding on it, was the marshes; and that the low leaden line beyond, was
the river; and that the distant savage lair from which the wind was rushing, was
the sea; and that the small bundle of shivers growing afraid of it all and
beginning to cry, was Pip.
"Hold your noise!" cried a terrible voice, as a man started up from among
the graves at the side of the church porch. "Keep still, you little devil, or
I'll cut your throat!"
A fearful man, all in coarse grey, with a great iron on his leg. A man
with no hat, and with broken shoes, and with an old rag tied round his head. A
man who had been soaked in water, and smothered in mud, and lamed by stones, and
cut by flints, and stung by nettles, and torn by briars; who limped, and
shivered, and glared and growled; and whose teeth chattered in his head as he
seized me by the chin.
"O! Don't cut my throat, sir," I pleaded in terror. "Pray don't do it,
sir."
"Tell us your name!" said the man. "Quick!"
"Pip, sir."
"Once more," said the man, staring at me. "Give it mouth!"
"Pip. Pip, sir."
"Show us where you live," said the man. "Pint out the place!"
I pointed to where our village lay, on the flat in-shore among the
alder-trees and pollards, a mile or more from the church.
The man, after looking at me for a moment, turned me upside down, and
emptied my pockets. There was nothing in them but a piece of bread. When the
church came to itself - for he was so sudden and strong that he made it go head
over heels before me, and I saw the steeple under my feet - when the church came
to itself, I say, I was seated on a high tombstone, trembling, while he ate the
bread ravenously.
"You young dog," said the man, licking his lips, "what fat cheeks you ha'
got."
I believe they were fat, though I was at that time undersized for my years,
and not strong.
"Darn me if I couldn't eat em," said the man, with a threatening shake of
his head, "and if I han't half a mind to't!"
I earnestly expressed my hope that he wouldn't, and held tighter to the
tombstone on which he had put me; partly, to keep myself upon it; partly, to
keep myself from crying.
"Now lookee here!" said the man. "Where's your mother?"
"There, sir!" said I.
He started, made a short run, and stopped and looked over his shoulder.
"There, sir!" I timidly explained. "Also Georgiana. That's my mother."
"Oh!" said he, coming back. "And is that your father alonger your mother?"
"Yes, sir," said I; "him too; late of this parish."
"Ha!" he muttered then, considering. "Who d'ye live with - supposin'
you're kindly let to live, which I han't made up my mind about?"
"My sister, sir - Mrs. Joe Gargery - wife of Joe Gargery, the blacksmith,
sir."
"Blacksmith, eh?" said he. And looked down at his leg.
After darkly looking at his leg and me several times, he came closer to my
tombstone, took me by both arms, and tilted me back as far as he could hold me;
so that his eyes looked most powerfully down into mine, and mine looked most
helplessly up into his.
"Now lookee here," he said, "the question being whether you're to be let to
live. You know what a file is?"
"Yes, sir."
"And you know what wittles is?"
"Yes, sir."
After each question he tilted me over a little more, so as to give me a
greater sense of helplessness and danger.
"You get me a file." He tilted me again. "And you get me wittles." He
tilted me again. "You bring 'em both to me." He tilted me again. "Or I'll have
your heart and liver out." He tilted me again.
I was dreadfully frightened, and so giddy that I clung to him with both
hands, and said, "If you would kindly please to let me keep upright, sir,
perhaps I shouldn't be sick, and perhaps I could attend more."
He gave me a most tremendous dip and roll, so that the church jumped over
its own weather-cock. Then, he held me by the arms, in an upright position on
the top of the stone, and went on in these fearful terms:
"You bring me, to-morrow morning early, that file and them wittles. You
bring the lot to me, at that old Battery over yonder. You do it, and you never
dare to say a word or dare to make a sign concerning your having seen such a
person as me, or any person sumever, and you shall be let to live. You fail, or
you go from my words in any partickler, no matter how small it is, and your
heart and your liver shall be tore out, roasted and ate. Now, I ain't alone, as
you may think I am. There's a young man hid with me, in comparison with which
young man I am a Angel. That young man hears the words I speak. That young man
has a secret way pecooliar to himself, of getting at a boy, and at his heart,
and at his liver. It is in wain for a boy to attempt to hide himself from that
young man. A boy may lock his door, may be warm in bed, may tuck himself up,
may draw the clothes over his head, may think himself comfortable and safe, but
that young man will softly creep and creep his way to him and tear him open. I
am a-keeping that young man from harming of you at the present moment, with
great difficulty. I find it wery hard to hold that young man off of your
inside. Now, what do you say?"
I said that I would get him the file, and I would get him what broken bits
of food I could, and I would come to him at the Battery, early in the morning.
"Say Lord strike you dead if you don't!" said the man.
I said so, and he took me down.
"Now," he pursued, "you remember what you've undertook, and you remember
that young man, and you get home!"
"Goo-good night, sir," I faltered.
"Much of that!" said he, glancing about him over the cold wet flat. "I wish
I was a frog. Or a eel!"
At the same time, he hugged his shuddering body in both his arms - clasping
himself, as if to hold himself together - and limped towards the low church
wall. As I saw him go, picking his way among the nettles, and among the
brambles that bound the green mounds, he looked in my young eyes as if he were
eluding the hands of the dead people, stretching up cautiously out of their
graves, to get a twist upon his ankle and pull him in.
When he came to the low church wall, he got over it, like a man whose legs
were numbed and stiff, and then turned round to look for me. When I saw him
turning, I set my face towards home, and made the best use of my legs. But
presently I looked over my shoulder, and saw him going on again towards the
river, still hugging himself in both arms, and picking his way with his sore
feet among the great stones dropped into the marshes here and there, for
stepping-places when the rains were heavy, or the tide was in.
The marshes were just a long black horizontal line then, as I stopped to
look after him; and the river was just another horizontal line, not nearly so
broad nor yet so black; and the sky was just a row of long angry red lines and
dense black lines intermixed. On the edge of the river I could faintly make out
the only two black things in all the prospect that seemed to be standing
upright; one of these was the beacon by which the sailors steered - like an
unhooped cask upon a pole - an ugly thing when you were near it; the other a
gibbet, with some chains hanging to it which had once held a pirate. The man
was limping on towards this latter, as if he were the pirate come to life, and
come down, and going back to hook himself up again. It gave me a terrible turn
when I thought so; and as I saw the cattle lifting their heads to gaze after
him, I wondered whether they thought so too. I looked all round for the
horrible young man, and could see no signs of him. But, now I was frightened
again, and ran home without stopping.
Chapter 2
My sister, Mrs. Joe Gargery, was more than twenty years older than I, and
had established a great reputation with herself and the neighbours because she
had brought me up "by hand." Having at that time to find out for myself what
the expression meant, and knowing her to have a hard and heavy hand, and to be
much in the habit of laying it upon her husband as well as upon me, I supposed
that Joe Gargery and I were both brought up by hand.
She was not a good-looking woman, my sister; and I had a general impression
that she must have made Joe Gargery marry her by hand. Joe was a fair man, with
curls of flaxen hair on each side of his smooth face, and with eyes of such a
very undecided blue that they seemed to have somehow got mixed with their own
whites. He was a mild, good-natured, sweet-tempered, easy-going, foolish, dear
fellow - a sort of Hercules in strength, and also in weakness.
My sister, Mrs. Joe, with black hair and eyes, had such a prevailing
redness of skin that I sometimes used to wonder whether it was possible she
washed herself with a nutmeg-grater instead of soap. She was tall and bony, and
almost always wore a coarse apron, fastened over her figure behind with two
loops, and having a square impregnable bib in front, that was stuck full of pins
and needles. She made it a powerful merit in herself, and a strong reproach
against Joe, that she wore this apron so much. Though I really see no reason
why she should have worn it at all: or why, if she did wear it at all, she
should not have taken it off, every day of her life.
Joe's forge adjoined our house, which was a wooden house, as many of the
dwellings in our country were - most of them, at that time. When I ran home from
the churchyard, the forge was shut up, and Joe was sitting alone in the kitchen.
Joe and I being fellow-sufferers, and having confidences as such, Joe imparted
a confidence to me, the moment I raised the latch of the door and peeped in at
him opposite to it, sitting in the chimney corner.
"Mrs. Joe has been out a dozen times, looking for you, Pip. And she's out
now, making it a baker's dozen."
"Is she?"
"Yes, Pip," said Joe; "and what's worse, she's got Tickler with her."
At this dismal intelligence, I twisted the only button on my waistcoat
round and round, and looked in great depression at the fire. Tickler was a
wax-ended piece of cane, worn smooth by collision with my tickled frame.
"She sot down," said Joe, "and she got up, and she made a grab at Tickler,
and she Ram-paged out. That's what she did," said Joe, slowly clearing the fire
between the lower bars with the poker, and looking at it: "she Ram-paged out,
Pip."
"Has she been gone long, Joe?" I always treated him as a larger species of
child, and as no more than my equal.
"Well," said Joe, glancing up at the Dutch clock, "she's been on the
Ram-page, this last spell, about five minutes, Pip. She's a- coming! Get
behind the door, old chap, and have the jack-towel betwixt you."
I took the advice. My sister, Mrs. Joe, throwing the door wide open, and
finding an obstruction behind it, immediately divined the cause, and applied
Tickler to its further investigation. She concluded by throwing me - I often
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